


Marvelous Miss and the Magnificent Mischief

by twothumbsandnostakeincanon (somanyofthekids)



Series: Steter Week 2019 [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire (Teen Wolf), Circus, Creature Stiles Stilinski, Food, Gen, M/M, Young Derek Hale, Young Peter Hale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 22:29:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20033386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somanyofthekids/pseuds/twothumbsandnostakeincanon
Summary: “Marvelous Miss and the Magnificent Mischief!” the carnival barker shouted just outside the corridor with all the food tents. “Come see Miss Paige do amazing tricks with her talking raven! He not only speaks, but he jokes! He teases! He philosophizes!”





	Marvelous Miss and the Magnificent Mischief

**Author's Note:**

> This was birthed over the course of 40 minutes this afternoon and absolutely not proofread, godspeed to anyone who tries to read it. 
> 
> For day one of Steter Week!

“Put on your jacket, we’re leaving.”

Peter threw the jacket at Derek, only a little disappointed when he caught it before it hit his face. Derek scowled back at him.

“No.”

“Alpha directive, nephew, get your ass in gear.”

Derek wanted to complain, but knew better than to argue with something his mom had ordered. Peter smirked a little as he reluctantly shoved his arms into his jacket and got up.

Once they were in the car, Derek just stared out the window. Peter frowned a little when he didn’t even make an attempt at touching the radio, but he kept his sigh to himself. That was the point of this whole endeavor anyway; Operation Get Derek Some Dopamine And Serotonin.

It took Derek almost ten minutes to notice, though.

“Wait, where are we going? Didn’t mom tell us to get groceries?”

Peter raised an eyebrow.

“Did I say anything about groceries?”

Derek set his jaw mulishly.

“You said it was an alpha directive,” he accused. “What did mom say _exactly?”_

“She told me to get you out of your, and this is a direct quote, ‘depression hovel,’ and take you somewhere that isn’t school or therapy,” Peter supplied cheerfully.

Derek’s mouth fell open for a moment before he crossed his arms and shoved himself back in his seat, eyebrows angrily bunched together.

“Take me home.”

“No.”

“Peter-”

_“No,_ Derek. We’re going to the fucking circus, and you’re going to eat a fucking funnel cake, and watch the fucking clowns juggle pineapples or whatever, and you’re going to make an _attempt_ at making your mother worry less,” Peter said, his tone absolute. He glanced over at Derek, who was looking out the window again, posture slumped. He sighed. “Look. I get that it’s an internal thing. You won’t feel better until you find a reason to feel better, but you’re not going to find that under your blankets. Plus Talia needed a chance to take back the twelve mugs you have in your room.”

Derek continued to stare out the window, but his posture became slightly more relaxed.

“I want cotton candy,” he mumbled. “Not a funnel cake.”

“Maybe, if you behave yourself.”

Derek flipped him off. Peter smiled.

* * *

“Marvelous Miss and the Magnificent Mischief!” the carnival barker shouted just outside the corridor with all the food tents. “Come see Miss Paige do amazing tricks with her talking raven! He not only speaks, but he jokes! He teases! He philosophizes!”

Derek looked up from his cotton candy with interest for the first time since they’d arrived.

“I thought only parrots could talk?” he said, looking at Peter in question.

“I don’t know,” Peter said with a shrug. “Either it can copy sounds, or Miss Paige is a ventriloquist. Either way, it sounds creepy. I think we should go fuck with the midway games some more.”

Derek rolled his eyes.

“If you keep knocking over all the bottles that’ve been glued down, eventually you’re gonna call attention to us.”

“What are they gonna do?” Peter challenged. “Admit that the games are fixed? They can’t bring attention to us without bringing attention to themselves. I just want to freak out the kids running the booths.”

“Come on, let's go see the talking raven,” Derek said, turning to walk into the tent.

“It’s a _bird,”_ Peter complained even as he followed Derek. “Birds are _boring.”_

“So’s your mom,” a deep voice croaked just inside the tent. “Boring.”

_What?_

"So's your mom!"

Peter turned to the voice, ready to eviscerate whatever simpleton still found “your mom” jokes funny- but instead of an idiot, he saw a large raven perched on a stand.

“Boring,” the raven repeated. “Boring. So’s your mom.”

“Sorry about that.” A young woman appeared behind them, adorable with soft brown curls and a clever smile. “Mischief has a knack for repeating phrases at the worst possible moment.”

She lifted up a gloved arm, and Mischief spread his wings, much bigger than Peter would have thought, before flapping over to the woman’s arm, clipping Peter’s head with his feathers in the process.

Once the bird was settled, the woman spoke again.

“I’m Miss Paige. The show is starting in five minutes if you’d like to get a good seat.” She smiled again, and then winked directly at Derek before heading behind a stage divider.

Derek stared after her with an open mouth.

Peter rolled his eyes.

“Come on, loverboy, let’s sit down.” 

Derek threw an elbow at Peter with a scowl, which Peter neatly dodged. 

"Don't call me loverboy," Derek said tersely, face turning to stone. Peter softened a little. 

"There's nothing wrong being a lover and not a fighter, Derek. The pack needs both." 

Derek snorted derisively as they took their seats. 

"Yeah? Does the pack need someone who leads hunters to their front door too?"

"Stop being dramatic, you hardly led her to our front door. You had a crush on your teacher who turned out to be a hunter, big deal. I would have sucked Mr. Stensel's dick given half a chance, and he's in jail for cock fighting now-"

"Oh my God, please stop."

"-What matters is that you told us about her, and she got caught before anything could happen. The crush wasn't the problem. The hunter was the problem. Have as many crushes as you want, even on weird girls with rude talking ravens."

Derek looked at Peter for a moment, expression somewhere between exasperated and thoughtful, until the lights in the tent started to dim. 

A low spotlight lit up the stage. Miss Paige stepped out with a crowd-pleasing grin and a flourish of her arms. 

"Hello Beacon County! I am Marvelous Miss Paige, and this is my show. Normally my friend, the Magnificent Mischief, is here to start the show with me, but I haven't seen him-"

"MISS," croaked a loud voice from the back of the tent. The word was followed up with a swoosh of wings, and a few shrieks from members of the crowd. Peter himself startled at the feeling of feathers brushing the back of his head, and in the next moment Miss Paige held the huge black raven on her arm. 

"Miss!" the bird croaked again. Miss Paige tutted. 

"Where were you Mischief? Were you talking to those crows again?" Miss Paige turned to face the crowd. "You know, a lot of people don't know the difference between a crow and a raven, but there are some simple differences you can look for. Ravens tend to travel in pairs, while crows move in groups. Crows caw, and a raven's call sounds more like a croak. And last of all, a crow has one less pinion feather than a raven."

"It's all a matter of a pinion!" the raven croaked, and the crowd chuckled.

Peter rolled his eyes with a quiet groan. The bird's head cocked in his direction, and fluffed it's feathers a bit. Next to him, Derek smiled and raptly watched the stage. 

The rest of the show continued like that. It was clearly geared toward young children, a mixture of easy to understand humor and education. Derek's eyes were so glued to Paige that Peter thought he might propose. 

Peter, on the other hand, kept his eyes on the raven. It was remarkable, he had to admit. The bird had astounding diction for something without lips. And it seemed... unusually aware. Almost as if it wasn't just waiting for cues from it's trainer, but actually acting with her. 

He was curious. 

As soon as the show ended, Derek shot to his feet to give a standing ovation. A few of the younger children joined him, and soon after the tent lights came up. Derek turned to face Peter, taking his eyes off the stage for the first time. 

"That was amazing."

"Yeah, the bird was interesting."

"Did you see the way Paige did all those tricks? And she's so smart!" 

Peter could see the hearts trying to fight their way out of Derek's eyes, and well. His whole goal today had been to distract Derek, so-

"Let's go around back and you can tell her how impressed you are."

"What? Do you really think I should do that?" Derek asked, unsure. "I mean, she probably has a ton of fans already..."

_Yes, the well-known event of fanclubs for traveling circus bird trainers,_ Peter thought. 

Out loud, he said, "I'm sure one more fan won't hurt, then." And he strode off, sure that Derek would follow. They easily found a little curtained off area marked with an EMPLOYEES ONLY sign, and as Peter listened, he could hear Miss Paige's voice. 

"-see the cutie with the big green eyes?"

"Blue eyed asshole."

"Yeah, he was next to the blue eyed guy you insulted, you little brat." 

Impatient, Derek knocked on a piece of wood next to the curtain, and the voices fell silent. Miss Paige's cautious face appeared around the curtain, until her eyes fell on Derek. He expression brightened. 

"Oh, hello! Can I help you?" 

"I just wanted to say how much I loved the show," Derek blurted out breathlessly. "It was amazing. You were amazing. Did you train Mischief yourself? How did you learn how to do that?" 

Paige's cheeks turned just a shade more pink, her smile utterly pleased. 

"Why don't you come back here and we can talk? Oh, uh, both of you of course," she said, belatedly noticing Peter and opening the curtain wider. Derek immediately ducked in, like an eager puppy, while Peter followed a little more sedately. 

Mischief was perched on the back of a chair, with a beady little eye following their every move. Paige invited them both to sit on a bench in the corner while she sat in the chair that was already partially occupied. 

She reached up to run a finger down Mischief's beak as she said, "I didn't actually have to do much to train Mischief. You could say he trained himself." The bird nipped at her finger lightly. "The show is my baby, though. I wrote the whole thing by myself a few months ago, after I got my GED."

"GED?" Derek questioned. 

"My friend and I had an... unconventional childhood. A high school diploma never seemed likely for us, and wasn't important to me anyway. We both got our GED at the same time and joined the circus."

"That's so cool. What does your friend do?" 

"He's another entertainer with a tent show." They both waited for her to elaborate further, but were interrupted by Mischief croaking out the word "Hungry!" Derek laughed, delighted. 

"Can I feed him?" he asked.

"What does it even eat?" Peter followed up, eyeing the raven disdainfully. 

"Flesh," the bird croaked, looking straight at him. 

"Yes, um, he," Paige hurried to say, stressing the pronoun, "is an omnivore, but eats more meat than anything else. It's not the most pleasant thing to watch, actually. It's kinda gross." 

Mischief shuffled to the side, inadvertently whacking Paige with his tail feathers. 

"Hungry!" the bird insisted. 

Peter stared. 

"I'm sorry," Paige apologized, "he usually gets to eat about this time. Actually, he's been a bit of a pill to you today all around, hasn't he?" She sent a sideways glare to the bird who glared right back. "Let me give you two some free tickets to come back whenever you'd like, to make up for it."

She shuffled some things on her desk, eventually producing two vouchers that she signed, and then handing them over.

"There you go! You can come back whenever you like before the twenty second. That's our last day before we move further south."

Derek managed to fit in another four compliments before they left the tent, and wouldn't stop talking about how amazing Miss Paige was until they were back in the car. 

"What about that bird, though?" Peter said when he could finally get in a word. 

"What about it?"

"It seemed a little... off."

"Well it's a trained bird. And neither of us knew that ravens could even talk until today. Maybe they're all like that?" Derek suggested. 

"Hm. Maybe." Peter put the car into drive and started heading home, trying to put the animal out of his mind. 

* * *

"But we were just there yesterday," Peter said. 

"Yeah, but... she gave us those vouchers," Derek countered, eyes wide. "We have to use them before the circus leaves, right?" 

"We have three weeks before they move on, Derek."

"What if we keep putting it off and then we waste them? That would be so rude, Peter!" 

"Just admit you want to go talk to the cute bird girl, Derek." 

"... I wanna go talk to the cute bird girl." 

"Fine. But I want you to help me investigate that raven of hers while we're there. There's something wrong with it." 

"Sure, good, great, let's go!"

* * *

Paige lit up when she saw Derek in the front row that afternoon, and invited them both right back after the show. 

"You came back!" she said, delighted. 

"Yeah," Derek said. 

Peter immediately tuned out their nonsense and focused his attention on Mischief. 

The bird was sitting on an actual perch this time, something that looked like an actual tree. He was preening his feathers and clicking softly. He looked... like a bird. A bird who was doing bird things. Peter continued to stare thoughtfully, wondering if maybe Derek was right after all. 

Then the raven suddenly turned to look at Peter. 

"What are you looking at?" he croaked. 

Paige startled, giving a little squeak of surprise. Peter glanced over her. 

"He has quite the vocabulary, doesn't he?" 

She cleared her throat. 

"Ravens can vocalize in as many as 33 different categories, so it really just depends on what he's interested in repeating on a given day," she said, glancing back at Mischief. She gave a forced little self-deprecating laugh. "Sometimes he'll repeat phrases I didn't even know he knew." 

Peter eyed her for a moment, trying to decide if she was hiding something, or just embarrassed on behalf of her bird. 

He went back to watching the bird after that, paying just enough attention to hear his nephew stumble through asking Paige on a date. She said yes nearly before he could finish the question. 

Their twin blushes might have been cute if Peter hadn't been so vexed by the rude raven. 

* * *

The next morning, Peter left the house alone. 

Everyone was thrilled that Derek was going on a date again. Of course, a lot of that excitement was reliant on Peter's reassurances that there was no way Paige was a hunter. He smelled no wolfsbane around her, she carried no weapons, and she simply didn't act like the kind of person who'd been taught to kill. 

That didn't mean he was totally unsuspicious. 

There was something wrong with that damn bird. 

He snuck into the circus over a fence near the animal pens, where security was lax. A few growls kept away any aggressive beasties that thought they could take him in a fight, and soon Peter was slinking silently between the tents. It took a little while for him to find what he was looking for from the opposite direction, but eventually Peter spotted it. 

The tent of Marvelous Miss and the Magnificent Mischief.

He paused just inside the tent, listening. He couldn't hear a human heart beat, just the quick rhythm of the raven's pulse, and a slight rustle of feathers. The rustle got louder, and Peter used the sound to cover his entrance into the curtained off area. 

A young man stood in front of the desk. 

Naked. 

With half a cookie sticking out of his mouth. 

They stared at each other for a moment. 

Suddenly, the only worry Peter had was for Derek's upcoming second heartbreak. 

"Are you sleeping with Paige?" he asked, voice quiet and dangerous. Strangely, the young man didn't look scared. He broke off the portion of cookie that was sticking out, and chewed slowly, looking Peter up and down. 

"That definitely seems like it's not your business," he said eventually. 

There was something familiar about his tone. Peter wondered if maybe he was a barker for one of the other tents. 

"It is if your bedmate is going to break my nephew's heart," Peter said, letting more of a threat seep into his voice. Naked Cookie Boy snorted. 

"That would almost be sweet if you weren't trespassing right now. Alright, let me soothe your worries: I'm not sleeping with Paige. Well, actually yeah, I am, but like, just literally sleeping. We're basically siblings. Also I'm mega gay. So no, Derek has nothing to worry about." 

Peter's eyes narrowed. 

"How do you know his name?" he asked, and got an eye roll for his efforts. 

"Paige hasn't stopped talking about him for the last two days. 'He has gorgeous green eyes and adorable bunny teeth. Even his name is cute, Stiles!'" Stiles rolled his eyes again and shoved the rest of the cookie in his mouth. "Anyway, you're not supposed to be here. I don't know what your deal is, but I need to get dressed, so-"

"Where's the bird?" Peter interrupted, suddenly realizing what was out of place. "Where's Mischief?"

Stiles stilled. 

"He's with Paige." 

"No. No, I heard feathers before I came in here. Where's the raven?"

"Dude, you probably just heard me moving around in here-"

"My hearing is _very good,"_ Peter emphasized, looking hard at Stiles, leaning forward aggressively. He knew he was right. 

Stiles looked right back, just as hard. 

"Apparently not that good, because there's No. Bird. In. Here." He gestured around to the feather-free room. 

"You're an idiot if you think I can't tell that something's up here," Peter seethed. 

"Yeah, well so's your mom," Stiles shot back. 

Peter stood up ramrod straight. 

Everything suddenly cleared into crystal. 

"You're a wereraven!" he burst out. He let his eyes light up, canines dropping a little. Stiles' eyes widened. 

"Oh, _fuck you._ Is your nephew a shifter too? Are you telling me I could have shifted and eaten my dinner right after the show both times you were here?"

Peter raised his eyebrows. 

"Seriously? That's your biggest concern?" 

"I was _hungry,"_ Stiles said vehemently. "Jesus Christ. Paige is going to have a field day, she was convinced you were both something. 'No one gets that attractive without magic, Stiles,'" he finished in a high pitched sing-song. 

Peter couldn't help his amusement. He lips lifted a little at the corner, and then a little more, and then suddenly he was laughing. It was just so ridiculous. It was absolutely absurd. 

Stiles looked at him like he'd lost his mind. 

"You're pretty weird, you know?" 

Peter wiped the corner of his eye as he started to get his breath back. 

"Sorry. We had a hunter scare a few months ago." He shrugged. "You'll have to pardon my paranoia." 

Stiles looked sympathetic. Cautiously, he put a comforting hand on Peter's arm. 

"Sorry dude. I do understand that. Hunters are... well, let's just say that hunters are why Paige and I had such a crazy upbringing."

Suddenly another heartbeat entered the tent. Peter and Stiles both turned to look just in time for the curtain to pull aside, and see Paige step in. 

"Stiles, if you want breakfa-" She stopped as she took in the scene, Stiles naked, hand on Peter's arm, Peter's teeth still showing, a few cookie crumbs still dusting the scene. 

"... I guess you're eating something else for breakfast," she finally said. 

"Oh my God, Paige," Stiles said. 

Paige threw up her hands. 

"Whatever dude, I don't need details, just be ready for the show this afternoon, and don't get spunk on my costume."

"PAIGE."

But she was already leaving the tent. 

Peter turned back to look at Stiles, who was rubbing his slightly pink cheeks. 

"Sorry about that," he muttered. 

Peter shrugged. 

"I don't mind." He took a moment to look Stiles up and down a little more thoroughly. "I _really_ don't mind." 

Stiles grinned. 

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly didn't think I'd have anything to post today but I'm glad I ended up with this, because tomorrow's is Not Fluffy lmao


End file.
